South Korean voters head to the polls to elect a new president on Tuesday, two months after a court upheld the impeachment of former president Park Geun-hye over a corruption scandal.
Her successor as the leader of Asia’s fourth largest economy will have some difficult decisions to make over the next five years.
The country famed for its technological exports faces growing youth unemployment, high rates of household debt and fear of poverty among the elderly, as well as escalating tensions with its neighbour North Korea over the latter’s nuclear weapons programme.
Observers also believe the election will be a vote on how closely South Koreans want to bind themselves to the United States.
“There are two key issues in this election,” says North Korea expert Paik Hak-soon of the Sejong Institute, a political think tank.
“One is security, the other is the economy.”
He believes that room for dialogue with an increasingly belligerent North Korea needs to be created.
But the window for that dialogue could shut, says Paik, who also acts as an adviser on security issues to centrist candidate Ahn Cheol-soo,
if Pyongyang carries out another nuclear test.
South Koreans also want someone who can guide their country out of the internal crises in which it has become embroiled over the past year.
Following nine years of conservative government, everything indicates the country may be ready for an abrupt change in direction.
Opinion polls give opposition centre-left candidate Moon Jae-in, who was chief of staff under former president Roh Moo-hyun, a clear lead.
It is the 64-year-old former human rights lawyer’s second bid for the presidency — in 2012 he was defeated by Park, the country’s first female president and daughter of the country’s one-time military dictator Park Chung-hee.
The corruption scandal which led to Park’s impeachment in December and has now led to her being charged with bribery, coercion, abuse of power and leaking state secrets, has also severely damaged the public’s trust in government and her party.
The most recent survey by opinion pollsters Realmeter gave Moon 42.4% of the vote. Former software developer Ahn, of the smaller People’s Party, and Hong Joon-pyo, of Park’s Liberal Korea Party, came joint second on 18.6%. 
But 20% of the country’s 42.5mn registered voters were still undecided.
The election has been very much overshadowed by the question of how to deal with Pyongyang.
The candidates have varied widely in their solutions, with the left suggesting that the government needs to attempt a rapprochement with North Korea and the conservatives demanding that South Korea should once again play host to US nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
The recent confrontation between Pyongyang and Washington has further unsettled South Koreans, with the unpredictable US President Donald Trump threatening to take unilateral action against North Korea, which is trying to develop weapons that can reach the US mainland.
Although so far, there is no sign of panic, there is a growing sense of uneasiness that an unforeseen military incident could quickly spiral out of control.
Frontrunner Moon prefers dialogue and wants to return to the policy of rapprochement followed by his mentor Roh.
He has rejected criticism that this makes Seoul look weak and could endanger its alliance with the US, arguing that sanctions alone won’t work.
“We need a completely new vision for permanent peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula,” he says.
But he has also made clear that a dialogue will be made harder if the North carries out another nuclear test.
Whatever the result of Tuesday’s poll, South Korea’s next president faces some tough choices.


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